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Saturday, December 23, 2006

Mega!

We’ve just had a real garden rarity. Small, streaked and brown, it skulked in the middle of the bush, revealing itself a couple of times only during its brief stay.

The identity of the bird? A female House Sparrow! The nearest sparrows are about a mile away from our patch, so I guess that it was swept along in a gang of Chaffinches (which are quite numerous at the moment).

It’s gone now – wonder when the next one will be, and whether it’ll bring a friend?

I would think that the reason there are no sparrows here is that there are no nest sites. We’re a bit lacking in hedges and I don’t know whether the eaves of the house are accessible. If we get more sparrows, we’ll buy a ‘sparrow terrace’ (three nestboxes all joined together – sparrows are colonial nesters) and see what happens.